Order of the Majestic

by Matt Myklusch

  “You know about the Invisible Hand?” Shazad asked.

  Joey’s stomach churned as he thought about his conversation with the Invisible Hand’s sinister agent, the man in the top hat and scarf. “We’ve met,” he said, determined not to let his unease register on his face. “They dropped in on me last night.”

  “I’m surprised you came back after last night,” Leanora told Joey. “I would have quit if I were you.”

  Joey grimaced. “Thanks for sharing.”

  “No offense,” Leanora said. “I’m just saying, you didn’t exactly distinguish yourself. Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  Joey thought about Redondo’s warning. They’re going to hate you.… They hate you already.… You’re in their way.… “I know what you’re doing,” he said.

  “What am I doing?” Leanora asked innocently.

  “Trying to psych me out. Get me to quit.”

  “You should quit,” Shazad chimed in. “For your own good,” he added hastily. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but she’s right. You’re not ready for this, and you don’t have time to play catch-up. It’s obvious you can’t do magic. There’s no shame in bowing out.”

  Shazad spoke as if he were more concerned about Joey’s well-being than anything else, and maybe he was. Joey certainly hadn’t given Shazad any reason to be worried about him as competition. During the brief time they had spent together, Joey’s magic record had been an unbroken string of failures. Whether Joey liked it or not, Shazad was making sense.

  “You’re right,” Joey said. “That isn’t what I want to hear. And I can do magic,” he added, stubbornly trying to convince himself as much as Shazad and Leanora. “Don’t forget, Redondo said he was going to destroy the wand before I found this place. I convinced him to pass it on to one of us. You should be thanking me, not playing games, trying to get inside my head.”

  “That’s not what we’re doing,” Leanora said gently. “I don’t think you understand what you’re getting into, Joey. This is serious business. Whoever wins Houdini’s wand from Redondo inherits a solemn duty.”

  “And gets a target painted on their back,” Shazad said. “The Invisible Hand is outside the theater right now, trying to get in. Look at this place. It’s falling apart. How long do we have before the shadows beat down the front door and take the wand by force? We don’t have time to waste dragging out this competition. We need to get Houdini’s wand out of here. Now.”

  “You keep saying we,” Joey observed. “I get the feeling what you really mean is you.”

  Shazad shrugged. “Of course I think it should be me. Don’t we all? The difference is, the wand would be safe with me. Can either of you say the same?”

  “I can,” Leanora said.

  “You don’t know that,” Shazad countered. “Your people don’t know where they’re going to be from one week to the next. And you…” Shazad looked to Joey. “You’re a norm. From the normal world.” He said “normal world” as if the idea of the wand ending up there was completely ridiculous.

  “But you could hide the wand away in Jorako with the rest of your treasures. Is that it?” Leanora asked.

  “That is the Order of the Majestic’s mission, isn’t it? To preserve magic and keep it alive?”

  “Staying alive isn’t the same thing as living,” Leanora said. “It’s not enough to preserve magic. The Order needs to take the fight to the Invisible Hand.”

  “I thought the Order of the Majestic didn’t exist anymore,” Joey interjected.

  “They don’t,” Shazad confirmed. “You can thank Redondo for that. He pushed things too far.”

  “Too far?” Leanora said, raising her voice slightly. “When Redondo led the Order, he scored the kind of victories we haven’t seen since the days of Houdini.”

  “If this is what victory looks like, it didn’t work out very well for him, did it?” Shazad gestured to the run-down theater. “Redondo poked the bear and paid the price. Just like Houdini.”

  “What?” Joey and Leanora exclaimed together, both of them surprised to hear the memory of Harry Houdini evoked in anything less than reverent tones.

  “You heard me,” Shazad said matter-of-factly. “All those performances for the norms… always drawing attention to himself… Houdini practically dared the Invisible Hand to come after him. For what? Tell me, what did he actually accomplish? Other than nearly losing the most powerful magical artifact in the world, that is… For all the hype around that man, he never did anything that mattered.”

  “If that’s what you think,” Leanora began, “then you don’t deserve his wand. He inspired people. Houdini hid magic in plain sight and filled the world with wonder.”

  “Right up until the point when they killed him.”

  “Maybe so, but his legend never died,” Leanora said. “Even he knows Houdini’s name,” she added, indicating Joey. “In his day, Houdini was the most famous magician—the most famous person—in the world. That made him more powerful than the Invisible Hand. More influential. You’re wrong about him. He made people care about magic. He made them believe.”

  “Hang on. Are you saying the Invisible Hand killed Harry Houdini?” Joey said, struggling to keep up.

  “Of course they killed him,” Leanora replied, as if Joey had interrupted the conversation to confirm that two plus two equaled four. “What exactly do you know about the Invisible Hand?” she asked, scrutinizing Joey.

  The truth was, Joey didn’t know very much at all, but he wasn’t about to admit that. Instead, he folded his arms and said, “I know the Order of the Majestic fought them over the world’s remaining magic.”

  “Exactly. Fought. Past tense,” Shazad said. “The fight’s over. They won. Houdini’s wand is the only thing that stands between them and total control.”

  “Of magic?” Joey asked.

  “Of the world!” Shazad said, astounded by Joey’s cluelessness.

  Joey’s eyes bulged. “What?” Shazad had to be exaggerating.

  “This is what I’m talking about,” Shazad said. “You don’t know. The Invisible Hand is a bigger superpower than any country or corporation. They control the world’s magic—most of it anyway. They decide what’s possible out there, and they make the world a very hard place to live in.”

  “What for?” Joey asked. “What do they get out of that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? They get to keep you down. If people like you don’t recognize magic when you see it, chances are you won’t go looking for it either. Less for you, more for them.”

  “I went looking for it,” Joey said.

  “I’m glad you did. I admit it. You got Redondo going again, and we’re all grateful, but I’m sorry. It’s not enough.” Shazad looked at Joey with compassion, trying to let him down easy. “I understand this is difficult for you. You got a taste of magic and you want more. I would too if I were you. Your world is filled with war, pollution, corruption, and things are getting worse, not better. Don’t you see? That’s the reason you can’t do magic. You can’t solve the problem when you’re part of the problem.”

  “The problem isn’t the world. It’s the Invisible Hand,” Leanora said. “The wand is the solution.”

  “They’re too strong,” Shazad told Leanora. “We can’t defeat them. The most we can do is try to hold the line.”

  “You guys are messing with me,” Joey said, still hoping they were trying to psych him out. “Houdini died of natural causes. It was appendicitis.” Joey had read as much online the night before.

  “Appendicitis brought about by a punch to the stomach,” Shazad replied. “Does that sound natural to you?” Shazad shook his head no. “But imagine if he was hit with one of these…” He trailed off, reaching for Leanora’s firestone pendant.

  “Don’t touch that,” Leanora said, pulling the necklace away.

  “Have you ever used it on another person?” Shazad asked her. “I’ll bet you haven’t. You like to say my family stays hidden, but yours is always on
the run. Why? Because you’re smart enough not to take on the Invisible Hand directly. At least, your parents must be. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. You may want to fight, but I have a feeling that’s only because you’ve never been in one. It’s one thing to do magic onstage. It’s quite another to do it under real pressure. Look what happened here with the rope. You think you could master the wand if push came to shove? Against the Invisible Hand?” Leanora had no answer for that. Shazad looked sideways at Joey. “If they tried to get the wand away from you, I doubt you’d be able to give it to them fast enough.”

  “But you’d keep the wand safe in Jorako,” Leanora said again. “You don’t think it would be wasted there? What’s the point if you’re just going to play keep-away and never use it?”

  “There’s nothing more important than keeping that wand away from the Invisible Hand,” Shazad said. “It’s more power than anyone should have. If you lost it to them, they could use it to remake the world any way they want.”

  “If it’s that dangerous, maybe Redondo had the right idea after all,” Joey said.

  “You mean destroying it?” Shazad scoffed at the notion. “That’s not what we do.”

  “What do we do, then?” Joey asked, legitimately curious. “If the Invisible Hand is such a threat to the world, why didn’t Redondo use the wand against them? Twenty years ago everyone said he was going to become the next Houdini.”

  “Take a look around,” Shazad said. “He did.”

  Joey examined the ruined theater, wondering what had happened to make Redondo hole up here and stop performing. “How did he end up—”

  “Here we are!” Redondo announced, stepping out onto the stage. He was holding Houdini’s wand at his side, aiming it at a full-length mirror that trailed behind him, floating an inch off the floor. With its ornate, extravagant golden frame, the mirror looked like it dated back to the Renaissance. “Sorry to keep you all waiting. This mirror was in deep storage. Getting at it took some doing, and obviously, it’s the kind of thing you want to be careful moving.” Redondo stopped short when he saw the tangled lines that had very recently held Joey and the others sprawled out onstage like a dead boa constrictor. “I see you found the Gordian rope.” With his free hand, he picked up the end that was closest to him and examined it. “Perhaps you’ve heard the story about how Alexander the Great unraveled an impossible knot by slicing it in half? Let’s just say there is more to that story than is widely known.” Redondo gave the rope a light shake, and the lengthy coils shrunk inward like a tape measure retracting back into its container. Once the stage was clear, he tossed the short rope away and brought the mirror down with a wave of his wand. “I’ll tell you about it some other time. Right now, we have work to do. Who wants to go first?”

  “Me,” Joey called out, eager to redeem himself and prove he belonged.

  Redondo turned to face Joey. “Young Kopecky. I wasn’t sure you’d come. Your performance last night was abysmal, but here you are. Back again. That counts for something. Just like yesterday, it’s not much, but it is something. You can have the first crack at today’s little test.” He tapped on the reflective surface of the mirror. “Just try not to crack it.”

  Joey stepped forward. “This is a magic mirror?” he guessed.

  “I’m interested to see if you can find your way through to the other side and back.”

  “Okay.” Joey took a breath, steeling his nerves. “Let’s do it.”

  Joey stood in front of the mirror, sizing up his reflection. The person staring back at him looked nervous. Unsure. This was neither the time nor the place for such feelings. Using the mirror, he looked at Redondo, who was standing with his arms crossed and an expectant look on his face. Behind him, Shazad whispered something to Leanora. It was obvious they didn’t like his chances. Joey focused on himself. It wasn’t about Redondo, Shazad, or anybody else. It was about him. Just him and the mirror. That was the key. Yesterday Redondo had told him, “One doesn’t do anything to make magic work. One simply gets out of the way.” The mirror was a magical object. As Joey stared down his reflection, he understood it wasn’t the mirror he had to get past, but rather, the person inside it. It was him. If Joey wanted to do this, he just had to decide he could. But he had to mean it.

  You can do this, he told himself. Believe in yourself. Redefine reality.

  Joey reached for the mirror. His fingers touched the glass. The surface rippled as if the frame contained a vertical plane of water.

  Instinctively, Joey retracted his hand slightly. As the ripples settled, he saw Redondo over his shoulder, his face betraying neither encouragement nor concern. The latter was not his style, and the former had to come from within. Joey screwed up his courage. What was he waiting for? He plunged his hand forward. It sank into the mirror as if the glass were not glass at all, but a thick, cool, silvery gel. He broke into a fascinated laugh, smiling as little droplets of mirror fell to the floor and pooled up like mercury at his feet. I’m doing it, he thought. I’m going in! Already in up to his elbow, Joey kept moving forward. Lifting his foot, he plunged it through the mirror without any thought as to what was waiting on the other side.

  His foot touched down on soft, powdery sand. As Joey came out of the magic mirror, the silvery gel slipped off his body and re-formed into glass behind him. Not so much as a droplet clung to his clothes. Joey felt like Neil Armstrong stepping off the lunar module for the very first time, only better. This was way beyond a trip to the moon. This was another reality. Another dimension. This was magic—real magic—and he’d done it on command.

  “YES!” Joey shouted, exploding with excitement as he broke into what would have been an incredibly embarrassing happy dance had anybody been there to see it. He fell to his knees, grabbing up handfuls of white sand, giggling uncontrollably. The sand had a smooth, flourlike consistency as it slipped through his fingers. He turned around, smiling at his reflection in the mirror, which was an exact replica of the one he had just walked through. “Who can’t do magic now, huh?”

  Joey wiped his hands on his shirt and looked around, checking out the alien landscape. It was calm and serene, a pristine white sand beach under an endless lavender sky. Crystal-clear waves lapped gently against the shore, making hardly any noise at all. The water had an iridescent, glimmering quality that for all he knew was pure, liquid magic. The beach went on for miles with no one in sight. There was nothing on the horizon and nothing in the sky. Only sand, water, and mirrors. There were hundreds of them, all in varying shapes and sizes, stuck in the sand up and down the beach.

  Joey got to his feet, completely in awe of his surroundings. He walked to the edge of the water. Little compact mirrors washed up on the shore there like seashells. “This is wild,” he said to himself, practically glowing from his achievement. He picked up one of the compacts and threw it sidearm into the water, trying to skip it across the waves. The mirror skipped seventeen times. Joey picked up another one, looking around the beach for someone to share this wonder with.

  “Well done, Joey,” said the man in the top hat and scarf. He tipped his cap. “Very well done indeed.”

  10 The Man in the Mirror

  Joey’s euphoric delight at having successfully used a mirror to travel to another dimension bottomed out quickly. The man in the top hat and scarf looked every inch as creepy and evil in the daylight as he had that first night in Joey’s room. “How did you get here?” he asked, backing up to the edge of the water.

  “This place is open to anyone with the means to travel.” The man gestured to the mirrors all around. “On this beach you’ll find the other side of every magic mirror in the world. They’re the doors to everywhere. We control most of them.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Joey, we’re everywhere. You can’t escape us. Besides, you’re easy to find.” The man tapped his own forehead, right in the center, where he had touched Joey’s head with an icy finger the night before. “Come here,” he said, motioning for Joey t
o join him. “It’s time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already. I told you, Redondo has something I want. You’re going to help me get it, remember?”

  “It doesn’t belong to you,” Joey said, looking around for a way out.

  “What’s that?”

  “The wand. It doesn’t belong to you.”

  The man lifted his chin, peering down at Joey with his glowing eyes. “What do you know about it?”

  “I know you—you’ll never get your hands on it,” Joey stuttered, trying to sound brave. “He’ll destroy it before he lets you have it.”

  “Then we haven’t a moment to lose.” The man held out his hand. “I don’t like repeating myself, but I’m going to say this again. Come. Here.” Joey stood his ground, partly defiant, partly paralyzed by fear. The man in the top hat and scarf sighed impatiently. “Joey, I said I wouldn’t hurt you provided you do as you’re told. Please don’t make me do this the hard way.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you do. You can’t get into the Majestic. Only people who don’t pose a threat can enter.”

  “Heh.” The man chuckled. “You don’t have to tell me that. I know Redondo sealed up all the entrances long ago. Why do you think we’re having this conversation?”

  “We’re not. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “Then let me do the talking.” The man in the top hat and scarf rested one hand on the frame of the mirror Joey had just come out of and knocked twice on the glass. “I can’t pass through this mirror; that’s true enough. But you can. Redondo’s given you the run of the theater, and I’m willing to bet you can put me on the guest list. Metaphorically speaking, of course. For example, imagine if some unforeseen injury were to befall you while you were here and some Good Samaritan tried to carry you home to safety. Would Redondo deny such a person entry when they were only trying to help? No. He would have allowed for that contingency. Or what if you came across someone in your travels who needed your aid? What then?”